Trudy Kane was Principal Flute at the Metropolitan Opera from 1976-2008, and Professor of Flute at the Frost School of Music from 2008-2019. She was honored with the National Flute Association’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2024.

Kane was also active in New York's recording studios and can be heard on the soundtracks of many film scores including The Untouchables and Beauty and the Beast (original). She can be heard and seen on many Met videos including Il Trittico, Manon Lescaut, Peter Grimes, and three different La Bohémes. Her solo CD In the French Style includes Sonatas by César Franck and Gabriel Fauré, and the Sonatine by Walter Gieseking.

In 2015, the Frost School commissioned Ellen Zwillich's Concerto Elegia for her, which she premiered and recorded with Thomas Sleeper and the Frost Symphony Orchestra. Kane performed the work again at the 2016 National Flute Convention.

Kane has been active in commissioning new works. They include several for flute ensemble including Thomas Sleeper's Concerto for Flute and Flute Orchestra, Dorothy Hindman's Mechanisms, and Lansing McLoskey's que la tierra se partió por su sonido. Thomas Sleeper wrote a Flute Sonata for her and pianist Oleksii Ivanchenko; Valerie Coleman wrote Matisseries for solo flute for her in 2019.

Kane has also been actively arranging works for flute ensemble. Her publications include arrangements of Act 2 of La Bohéme and the Intermezzo to Act 3 of Manon Lescaut, by Giacomo Puccini, Bedřich Smetana’s Overture to the Bartered Bride; flute quartets including Carmen for Four, François-Joseph Gossec’s Tambourin, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s Flight of the Bumble Bee, and the Final Trio from Richard Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier. Also published are Cadenzas to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Flute Concerto in D Major and her transcription of Gabriel Fauré’s Violin Sonata in A Major, Op. 13.

There are many YouTube videos available of performances and interviews. Active as a teacher, Trudy Kane continues to give masterclasses around the country.